Day 5 Tuesday, Aug. 31 -- Mt. Cook (Aoraki)

Synopsis

We drove from Geraldine into the mountains towards Mt. Cook National Park. We passed Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki, two milky-turquoise mountain lakes, on the way. When we arrived at Mt. Cook N. P., where we checked into taking a ski-plane trip. Unfortunately they had canceled the trips for the rest of the day because a front was moving in. Instead, we took a hike up to the terminal lake of Hooker Glacier, right at the foot of Mt. Cook, NZ’s tallest mountain at 3755m (~12,400 ft). It was a windy, but wonderful, 3-hour hike. We drove back to the eastern coast to Moraki (about 2 hours south of Christchurch).

Detailed Journal

We woke up early this morning (about 6am) and were ready to get off to an early start. While we were getting ready to go, Lynette tried to plug in her hair dryer, which caused a large spark, and the van went dark. So far, we’re two for two at pulling out the van’s user’s manual first thing in the morning. After about 20-30 minutes of trying to find a breaker and looking through the fuses, the motor camp owner came out to assist us. He suggested looking under the back seats for a breaker box, which we found. We flipped the breaker and were back in business. Whew!

Before we left, we asked the camp owners about a scenic flight around Mt. Cook. They called Mt. Cook Ski Planes, who said they were expecting a front to move in later that afternoon, but we could head up there and see who it looked when we got their because they didn’t have any reservations for the day.

The morning was foggy as we hit the road at about 8:30 and headed into the mountains. The mountain views didn’t take too long to reveal themselves on the way to Farlie, then over Burkes Pass and into Lake Tekapo. We stopped at Lake Tekapo, which is known for it’s milky turquoise appearance, but the angle of the sun was wrong so we couldn’t see the color. However, the views over the lake were quite magnificent, anyway.

We continued on through the mountains towards Lake Pukaki. A fairly unique feature of the drive was that there were so many huge snow-capped peaks, but the road was reasonably mild, following the flat lands between the mountains. Just like the area around Mt. Sunday that we saw the day before, the mountains just sprang almost straight up out of the relatively flat lands around it. We took a “tourist road” that we read about that showed some sweeping views of the Ben Ohau mountain range, culminating with Mt. Cook (known as Aoraki, a mythological deity, by the Maori) at the far end of the range. At 3755 meters, Mt. Cook is New Zealand’s highest point. What’s perhaps most amazing about it is that the Tasman Sea is only about 50 km from the peak.

We stopped and bought some “hot smoked” salmon (which was cold) from the salmon farm along the tourist road and took some pictures from their lookout point. Shortly after the salmon farm, Lake Pukaki came into view. Lake Pukaki is considerably larger than Lake Tekapo and surrounded by the same sort of impressive mountain scenery. Again, due to the lighting, the signature color was not visible as we approached. We drove around the lake, rejoining the main road (SH8) briefly before taking the Mt. Cook Village turnoff. Along the way to the village, we stopped in at the Mt. Cook Airfield to check on flights. The lady there told us that they had cancelled all of the afternoon flights due to wind and the oncoming front. We asked her about the hike to Hooker Glacier, and she told us that as long as we wore rain gear that we should be ok.

We hurried off to the trailhead to make sure we would finish before the front blew in. We suited up in our winter, waterproof gear and hit the trail. The trail led up a canyon surrounded with ominous, snow-covered peaks. Towards the top of the mountain in front of us at the beginning of the hike we spotted a large shelf of blue ice. We crossed over two narrow swing bridges, across which the wind whipped and howled. From there, we continued over the barren land up to the Hooker Glacier terminal lake. The lake had a foreboding look with craggy rocks all around and in the middle of the lake. Mt. Cook, shrouded in mist, loomed tall over the lake. The view must be absolutely spectacular on a clear day, but even with the grey fog obscuring the view it was an impressive sight. Jason took a 360deg panoramic picture with the digital camera of the area at Hooker’s Glacier.

By the time we reached Hooker’s Glacier, Lynette had developed some nice blisters on the back of her heels/ankles from her hiking boots (despite the artificial skin that she had put on before the hike – apparently it was too low). She put some Dr. Schoell’s blister repair on each heel in order to finish the hike to the car. On the way back from Hooker’s Glacier, we stopped and built a snowman on the side of the trail. We’ve now built snowmen in the most difficult months for us, typically, July and August (July of 1999 snowman was at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon).

Along the hike, there is a portion of the trail in an open field that is actually a small wooden boardwalk to keep trail-goers off the natural (and often damp) area. As we were crossing back, the front had really started to move in at full speed as we were walking along this wooden boardwalk. We both had to stop and stabilize ourselves to keep the wind from knocking us off the boardwalk. A few times, we had to throw our arms out for balance because the wind was so hard blowing against us. We notice this intense wind again when we came across our first pedestrian bridge on the return. The wind was so intense coming through the valley it felt like our clothes were going to be ripped off our backs.

We also checked out the Alpine Memorial on our way back. Some people were killed by an avalanche in the early 1900’s and their friends erected the memorial in their honor.

We jumped back in the van, and although the weather was quite chilly, we were adequately prepared, so we weren’t freezing cold. We headed back down the road we came in on, toward Lake Pukaki. As the lake came into view, we noticed that it was displaying its signature milky blue-green color. We snapped a few pictures of it on our way by. We got back to the main road and headed Southwest towards the town of Twizel. We had read about an endangered bird farm near Twizel, so we tried to find it. However, we realized that we had to check in at the visitor’s center at Twizel (unfortunately we were about 10 minutes past Twizel when we made the realization). We turned around and drove around Twizel a bit to find the visitor’s center, only to arrive about five minutes after it closed. Oh well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

Jason read in our Lord of the Rings tour book that the Battle of the Gladden Fields (The large battle between the orcs, Gondor, Rohan, etc., just outside of Minas Tirith) was filmed near Twizel. We did our best to find the location, found a big field that we thought looked similar to the scene, shot a couple of photos and moved on. We decided to camp in Moraki, which was a couple of hours down the road. On the way, we passed by Parsons Rock Recreation area and Parsons Rock Creek, and Lynette couldn’t resist taking a picture near the Parsons River sign. We arrived at the Moraki motor camp well after dark, paid the owner and found a spot overlooking the nearby bay. We ate cheese filled spinach tortellini with basil/pesto sauce and called it a night.